Home Decor: Tips to Adding Color to Your Interior Design

Pretty much any color will do it, but I have my favorites...yellow, orange and red.

In stressful situations, many girls would head to the spa, a friend's house or a bar. Your best bet to find me would be at a mega-sized House Improvement Center's paint department clutching paint chips...ahhhh, I feel better already.

When we built our home 5 years ago, it was my mission to do it without a neutral color.

Life is too short for neutral.

Now there is NO need to go to the extreme that I have in my home, but adding a little color to your home can inject a subtle attitude adjustment in the direction of rainbows and unicorns (let me clarify that it is in the direction of rainbows and unicorns, not the actual USE of rainbows and unicorns).

First you need to think about what colors make YOU happy. Flip through a home design magazine and stop when a photo makes you smile. Check what colors caused that reaction.

Color can help you create a home that FEELS happy.

Once you figure out what colors cause that pleasant reaction, now it is time to get to work adding it to your home.

Holly's Top Three Ways to Inject Color into Your Home Decor:

1. Buy it.

Have a color(s) in mind when you are shopping for anything in your home or happen across a sale. When you know the color story you are telling in your home, these purchases come naturally. The photo above contains a yellow cabinet I purchased 10 years ago, red dishes that I requested that Santa buy at Sam's Club 6 years ago and dessert plates that I picked up at Target on a clearance sale.

Because things are all in the same color family throughout my home, I have flexibility to use the same accessories in almost any room.

2. Have it made.

The red and white striped awning to the left is in my kitchen. It is an outdoor awning that I had installed inside. I searched high and low for draperies that would work in our eating area space without luck. I wanted something different, yet nostalgic. I wanted something colorful, yet not overwhelming. I wanted a red and white striped awning!

I checked into having a custom drapery treatment made that would look like an awning only to find that an actual awning would be much cheaper. It ended up to be a little more than I wanted to spend, but I was able to find all the frames hanging above my table (20 in total) at the dollar store so I am calling it even.

3. Paint it yourself.

I love the power of spray paint. When a home accessory feels old or tired, I paint it. Usually red. In the bookcase below you can see 3 red frames, a red basket and a red metal pedestal bowl.

All five of these items were spray painted.

The basket and bowl were previously dark brown and would never have showed up against the bookcase's dark wood (Another thing I like to do in dark bookcases is add lighting. The two lights shown here are both from IKEA).